


Lost Jedi

by idrilhadhafang



Series: The Broken Edge Deleted, Extended and Missing Scenes [35]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Depressed Luke, F/M, Gen, Jedi Luke Skywalker, Kylo Ren Angst, Kylo Ren Has Issues, Kylo Ren Needs a Hug, Kylo Ren and Rey Are Related, Luke Skywalker Needs A Hug, M/M, POV Luke Skywalker, Protective Luke, Rey Needs A Hug, Rey Skywalker, Sad Luke, my eulogy for EU!Luke, that turned into a monster
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-28
Updated: 2017-09-28
Packaged: 2019-01-06 08:26:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12207495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idrilhadhafang/pseuds/idrilhadhafang
Summary: Twenty facts about Luke Skywalker (heavily featuring Ben).





	Lost Jedi

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing. 
> 
> Author's Notes: This started off as a combination of my own eulogy to EU!Luke (inspired by news that they're not using any elements from the old EU) and some rumors about Luke's death in the sequel trilogy, before kind of becoming its own little monster. Luke's nightmare is semi-inspired by the Infernal Train sequence in Alice: Madness Returns, when Alice confronts the Mad Hatter, the Caterpillar and the Red Queen on said train -- which is (and full disclaimer, I've only seen walkthroughs on YouTube, embarrassing, I know) one of my favorite sequences in the game.

1\. When Ben is born and Han and Leia first bring him over to visit, Luke hasn't expected an infant to be so small. Of course infants are small, but there's something about this new lifeform that feels so very fragile, so very vulnerable.

Leia hands him the baby, and Luke takes him, careful not to hurt the baby with his mechanical hand. The baby stares up at him with wide, innocent eyes, just taking in the galaxy for the first time.

"Hey, Ben," Luke says. "I'm your uncle. It's great to meet you."

Ben reaches up to touch his face, and Luke is still, taking in this moment of just a new lifeform in front of him, so very innocent, so very gentle, and the trials that he likely has in front of him. 

 

2\. He isn't blind to the trials that Han and Leia are facing. They've always been rocky -- from the beginning, they've been rocky. It's probably what drew them together in the first place -- their rockiness, the sort of lightning flash of chemistry. Luke can remember too well their fights in the beginning, but these fights seem to be getting more serious. The fights in the beginning were almost a bizarre sort of courtship, ultimately insignificant, but this...

This may be the series of incidents that may actually break them apart for good. 

Luke knows that it's having an effect on their young son, and they don't seem to care. Well, they care about Ben, but they still won't stop fighting. And Leia...

Leia seems downright scared of Ben. 

Which...she shouldn't. He's just an innocent little boy. Even with the disturbing dreams Luke has been having about a man in a hood and mask (which he chalks up to as just bad dreams brought on by the stress of putting together an Academy. Jedi can have stress nightmares too, can't they, just like the rest of them), he's just an innocent little boy. He's nothing like the thoughts that he can pick up from Leia sometimes. The best he can do is be there for his innocent little nephew, the best that he can. 

 

3\. In truth, he can't help but feel guilty for taking Ben away from his parents. Is this how the old Jedi Order felt, taking kids away from their parents as babies? This can't be right, can it? Taking away babies from their parents, and it wasn't as if the parents were abusive; they genuinely loved their kids and cared for them. Luke can understand taking away the children to a better environment if the parents were abusive, or training them when they were older, but outright taking away the babies from their parents who loved them and cared for them? 

How is that right? Stars, how is that by any means the actions of a good --

Luke shakes his head thinking about it, poring over old scrolls late at night. None of this makes any sense. Maybe it will in time. And he did take Ben away to protect him from that creature who was hunting him, that presence. Didn't he? That wasn't a bad thing to do, was it?

Luke really doesn't know. And that...that disturbs him. 

 

4\. The first time he meets Jacen Yana, he can't help but feel a sort of deep-seated disgust and aversion to the man in the cloak. He already feels guilty for thinking so, but he can't help it. It's a deep-seated sort of revulsion that can't be backed up with facts. It's not even a matter of feeling his intentions through the Force -- it's the sort of disgust, the sort of unreasonable misgivings that Luke can't put his finger on why he feels this way. 

Even when he retires for the night, Luke still feels this sort of tickling fear. Maybe it's the side-effect of having a four year old nephew; even a relatively affable stranger such as Jacen Yana can seem like a predator. He's taught Ben the basics, about strangers, about inappropriate touching (and he hopes such a nightmare never falls on his little nephew), about secrets and surprises, and multiple other things that he's kept as appropriate as a four year old needs to know. But maybe that's the issue. Luke's jumping at shadows. After all, Yana hasn't done anything relatively offensive. He's even helped bring Ben back safely, actually. 

 And yet somehow, he can't help but wonder. 

 

5\. When Ben's fifteen, he tries to get Luke to enter the war, but Luke can't shake the idea that there's some sort of dark presence out there, lurking, waiting for him. Waiting for all of them, actually. He can't shake any of it, actually. So he refuses. It's nothing that his younger self would have done, but he finds himself, in this moment, having no choice. 

 

6\. There's something about the knowledge that his nephew's a Jedi Knight that fills Luke with a sort of awe and wonder at the same time. It's amazing. At eighteen, his nephew has passed the Trials, and is more than ready to go to the next step. 

It's still overwhelming. Ben's growing up, and Luke wonders if that's what it would have been like to see Jaina growing up. They are both his children, in a way, and he only wishes that he didn't need to leave Jaina behind on Jakku. It's one of those things that he regrets. 

He wishes she were here right now, actually. There's room in his heart for two, though, and there always will be. 

 

7\. Ben still blames himself for Thomas' death, and it's one of those times where it just breaks Luke's heart to watch. It isn't. None of it was. He wishes that there was a way to take the pain away from his nephew, but it seems that he's unable to. 

 

8\. Luke can't help but be worried when Ben enters his relationship with Poe. It's ridiculous, of course -- after all, Luke himself is married, but at the same time, there's something about it where he worries. What if things go horribly wrong? What if Ben --

He can't bear to think about it. He promised Leia that he would protect Ben. He can't bear to think of what would happen if he didn't do it. 

 

9\. The moment that Casterfo broadcasts the truth about Leia and Luke's heritage over the Holonet, Luke's heart breaks. He never wanted Leia or Ben to have to go through this, and even in the midst of warding off accusations from the other Masters, words of shock, he wonders how exactly Ben is doing. And he wonders if anyone else will understand why. How Vader sacrificed himself in the end. But perhaps the galaxy will never know how Vader did that one moment of good in his life in the end. Perhaps they will only know the matter of the bad. And that...

That's one of the things that utterly destroys Luke to think about. 

 

10\. The moment that he wakes up from Ben stunning him, he can feel the Force screaming a warning: the Academy is in danger. It's practically howling with grief and horror. There's multiple younglings, Masters, Knights and more dead, and Luke knows that in this moment, Order 66 has good as come again. 

" 'Lora," he says. "We've got to get to Yavin."

"I know." Alora says. "There's probably a ship we can steal, isn't there? Just to make it down there..."

They make it down here, but by then, it's too late. The Dark Side has finished its slaughter. It's done. They take in the bodies lying around the site, slashed with a lightsaber and otherwise. Finally, Alora speaks. "Ben...did you kill them?"

And Luke already knows the answer. He doesn't want it to be true, but here he is. All of it, ending this way. Ben, being the murderer. 

He pleads with Ben. It sounds pathetic, but he wants to appeal to any shred of Ben that's still in there, any shred at all.  

Ben draws his lightsaber. And the thoughts seem to pour from Luke in waves.  _Ben...how can you do this? It’s not you. By the stars it’s not you..._

"Ben," Luke says. "Please."

It's through a lucky break that the swipe doesn't go through Luke's hand. And as they duel, Luke finds that he can't cast the killing blow. Before him is the same little boy that he practically helped raise, the teenager who was so passionate about ending slavery, the young man who became a Knight. 

11\. Exile proves to be good for him at least. It gives him time to think, time to learn more about what went wrong. He learns more from Yoda, more from Obi-Wan -- he hasn't expected to actually still need them after all these years, but here he is. After all this time, he still needs them. They're not pleased with him, of course -- they think he's let them down, and he's right.

But he's going to make it right. He still needs a lot of research to do, of course, but he can do this, he truly can. 

 

12\. It's one night in exile that he has a dream. More specifically, a nightmare. The nightmares seem to be coming with more frequency, of course -- sometimes they're flashbacks to the Academy, and what happened there. Sometimes they're nightmares about Luke being the aggressor, destroying his own Academy. And sometimes they are nightmares like these. 

In the nightmare, he's back on the second Death Star, and it seems that the faces of everyone that's ever been in his life are there, enemies and friends and family and wife alike. The Emperor's on his throne, sneering at him as much as he was that moment on the second Death Star where it looked like they were going to lose everything. "You thought that you could resurrect the Jedi, young Skywalker? You thought that you could stand up to the power of the Dark Side? You were foolish. In the face of the Darkness, there can be no victory. And soon you will fall too. Whether you join us or die, you will still fall."

"You are wrong," Luke says. 

"Even after everything your nephew did?" Palpatine shapeshifts into Snoke, Clawdite-like, with the sort of logic that you would only find in dreams. "I took your nephew and shaped him into the arm of _ren_. Into _ren's_ instrument."

"There is still good in him," Luke says. "I felt it. He regretted killing them. He never wanted to do it. There was still a chance."

Snoke laughs, sardonically. "It was his destiny from the start. That living shadow wasn't the boogeyman that younglings are so afraid of."

And it all clicks into place. The fact that even from the start, Ben Solo had never stood a chance. That he had been preyed upon by this monstrous, manipulating beast, that Snoke had tracked his way to the Academy for the sake of swaying Ben to his side. 

Snoke continues. "He was mine by right. He always has been."

"He was never yours!" Luke says. He's unraveling. 

"Even before he was born, he was mine by right."

"You...you monster. Despicable _..."_

"And it's your fault too." Snoke transforms into Han in that moment. "You didn't even tell me my boy was being stalked. You took my boy away from me, and you good as gave him to that sonuvahutt who came here."

Luke's heart breaks in that moment. "Han -- "

"Everything's just one stupid decision after another, isn't it, kid? You let that bastard in, and you didn't even bother checking if he was trustworthy or not. So my boy grew up as the target of the same monster you were trying to hide him from. And you hated him. You probably thought I was stupid, huh, too stupid to see the way you and Leia looked at him. Like he was some minefield ready to go off." Han looks at him, disgusted. "Ya know, I don't think I can forgive what you did to my boy. And I'd like to forget, but I can't."

Han shapeshifts into Leia. "We both failed him. We both didn't see the Light in him. We both only saw a monster waiting to happen."

Into Anakin. "And now he's imitating me. Imitating my worst qualities, my worst deeds. Is that really what anyone wanted to happen?"

Luke wakes up in a cold sweat in that moment, and he's shaking and trying not to sweat, and grieving. "Ben! Oh dear stars, Ben...what have I _done_?"

 

13\. The more he learns about the Force, the more he realizes that the Jedi have it all wrong. They never were meant to sever all attachments, they never were meant to suppress all emotion. They were never meant to do any of this, actually. How could the Jedi have misunderstood, so thoroughly? 

How could Luke have misunderstood so thoroughly, with Ben? Acting like he couldn't be normal, just because of this balance of Light and Dark in him. Balance. And even aside from Light and Dark, it's so much bigger, so much more than this...

 

14. The porgs on Ach-To are his only other companions. There's something about them that's endearing, that keeps Luke company even through the loneliest times on the island, while he's still researching everything. While he's still poring over just about everything he knows -- tales of the Old Republic, tales of the Jedi, just to see where it all went wrong. 

 

15\. When Rey first comes to Ach-To, he's struck by a thought that comes to him about her being his lost daughter. The daughter that he had to leave long ago, behind on Jakku. Could she have come back after all this time? And with his old lightsaber, to boot. All of it is too much of some sort of cruel joke to be real, and yet here it is...

He doesn't respond well. And he sees the look in the young woman's eyes, that look of hurt and confusion, and feels guilty. And yet he's not ready. He needs more time. This young woman shouldn't have come here. 

She shouldn't have come back --

16\. Training with Rey -- with Jaina, he has to remind himself, even though he can't say that he's sure that the woman who came back from Jakku is truly Jaina, the same little girl that they (abandoned) left with Aaron and Zara -- is effectively a wake-up call in the end. All this time he's been researching and grieving, he's forgotten that there's a galaxy out there that needs him.

 

17\. Putting himself between his nephew and his daughter is definitely no small feat. Two beings in the galaxy that he loves more than anything, and he'd do anything for them both. Anything to save his daughter, anything to save his nephew. It's love that ultimately leads him to place himself in between his nephew and his daughter. To plead with his nephew to take him instead. 

Jaina fights for him, of course. She fails. And it's probably better that way. From there, he can find a way to save his nephew. To finish what he started long ago. 

"You're a fool, you know," Kylo Ren says. "To the very last."

"I know." Luke takes a deep breath. "It's what I needed to do."

 

 

 

18\. It's on the Finalizer that they argue. Luke tries to get Ben -- because he is Ben, he always will be Ben -- to see the Light, and Ben only gets defensive. Same as on Yavin, but this time, there are no lightsabers involved, only words, but words can cut as deep as lightsabers ever will. 

"I mean _nothing_ to you!" The anger practically shakes Kylo Ren's voice. "All these years, I've meant nothing to you. Maybe as someone you could potentially use, but nothing more than that. Someone you could hold back and control, but never as anything valuable."

And it's in that moment that Luke's heart breaks. "Ben..."

"Don't," Kylo snaps, "Call me 'Ben'."

Luke nods. "Fine," he says. "Kylo. But you're wrong about your meaning nothing to me."

 _Because_   _you mean everything to me._   _More than I realized, more than I was willing to admit._

"You're lying," Kylo says, and it sounds almost childish. Which he is, Luke thinks, momentarily in irritation -- but no, he genuinely does think that Luke really does think he means as little to him as bantha dung you'd accidentally step in, and that couldn't be further from the truth. 

"You can read minds." Luke can't believe he's saying this, but it's the best way to get Ben to understand. "Tell me, Kylo -- am I lying?"

Silence. Then, Kylo says, sounding honest to stars surprised, "You're...not lying."

And Luke can count it as a victory against Snoke in and of itself. 

 

19\. Snoke's lightsaber goes through his chest, and Luke feels like his chest's been filled with plasma. He hears Jaina scream in agony, almost a howl, and he looks up at Snoke, whose eyes are flickering with a sort of triumph. But Luke knows that Snoke's own fall is close at hand. Tyranny doesn't last forever, after all. This is no exception. 

The waking world fades, and Luke sees a woman that he knows too well walking towards him. Brown hair. Green eyes. And a smile that could, in that moment, outshine the suns.  

" 'Lora." And Luke knows, in a way, Snoke has given him perhaps the only merciful gift he's capable of -- giving Luke the opportunity to be reunited with his wife again.

They embrace tightly, and Luke buries his face in her shoulder. They're one now, in the Force and with the Force. And they will never be parted again.

 

20\. They hold a separate funeral for Luke that night. It's a funeral that's held away from Ben's more private funeral ceremony for Snoke. (Snoke's is a Milaran funeral service, as Ben imagined Snoke would have wanted) It's a funeral where they bury him next to Leia, as well as with some of his wife's things. Rey watches as everyone says their piece about Luke, shares stories that make her laugh and cry alike. Finally, she steps up to the podium. She has to admit that she's nervous. Funerals on Jakku haven't usually been like this. She remembers the two small graves for Aaron and Zara on Jakku, two of the people who helped raise her the most.

She takes a deep breath. "When Luke and I...no, when my father and I first met for the first time in years, we didn't get off to a good start," she says. "He was broken by his years in exile. And I can't say that I blame him, actually."

She swears that her cousin averts his gaze for a moment. She wants him to squirm at least a little for what he's done; he wouldn't really be sentient if he didn't do so.

She continues. "But in training, he taught me how to be strong. I can't say that he was a perfect man." And that's an understatement. "But he was a good one, and he went out a hero. He went out fighting the First Order, and saving our lives, as he always wanted to do. And he taught us that we all have a bit of Luke Skywalker in us, if we look deep inside." Her voice cracks. "Thank you."

She steps down from the podium, and the crowd claps, and Ben draws her into an embrace that makes Rey feel, for a moment, like they're not the enemies who faced each other, but cousins again. The scar is rough against her shoulder, and Rey knows that it will always be there to some extent to remind her of what she did. To remind her of that shred of darkness, the Skywalker anger in both her and her cousin, and how it affects them both.

"You did beautifully, Jaina." Jaina. She supposes she'll take a while to get used to that name. Rey-Jaina, Jaina-Rey...who is she, really? Perhaps she is both, a synthesis of who she was on Jakku and who she is now.

"You didn't do so bad yourself," she says. She draws away, looks at him closely. The scar that runs down his face. It's a testament to how close she came once, and she hopes she will never come that close again. They probably have their own scars to talk about, in time.

They walk off into the crowd, which is gathering for food and drink and reminiscence, and Rey looks back. Her father's ghost is there, with her mother's, watching over them both, because the ones you love never truly leave you. They're always there, in the Force, and in your heart.


End file.
